Apollo-Reborn

iOS tweak for Apollo for Reddit app that lets you continue using Apollo with your own API keys after its shutdown in June 2023. The tweak also unlocks several Ultra features and includes several enhancements and fixes.

[!NOTE] Apollo-ImprovedCustomApi is now Apollo-Reborn

May 22, 2026 — This project is now under team-based maintainership to keep Apollo polished and sustainably maintained for the community - join us at r/ApolloReborn!

Apollo Reborn team: @JeffreyCA, @icpryde, @jordanearle, @nickclyde, @DeltAndy123 ❤️

Install

Pre-built IPAs and AltStore Classic/SideStore/Feather sources are now available at apolloreborn.app!

Which build should I install?

The download page offers Standard / GLASS builds (with Apollo's app extensions plus the Apollo-Reborn widgets) and No Extensions builds. They are the same app — the difference is how much it costs to sideload:

• Standard / GLASS bundle ~6 app extensions, so a sideload registers about 7 App IDs (one per extension plus the app). A free Apple ID can register only 10 App IDs per 7 days, so a clean single install fits — but it's easy to exceed by installing under more than one bundle ID, reinstalling within the same week, or sideloading other extension-bearing apps. If an install fails with an App ID error, install a No Extensions build or wait for older App IDs to expire. A paid Apple Developer account has a much higher cap. (AltStore explains the limit.)
• No Extensions strips all app extensions (including widgets), so it only needs 1 App ID — the reliable choice on a free Apple ID that's running low.

This is separate from whether an installed extension actually launches on iOS 26, which depends on your installer — see the caveat in Opening links in Apollo.

Don't have an API key?

[!IMPORTANT] Reddit and Imgur no longer allow new API key creation so you'll need to share or use existing keys.

Reddit has also recently started revoking API keys that are specifically used for Apollo or any other third party client. If you still have your own working key, see Avoiding API key revocations.

Reddit has a special deal with Dystopia and RedReader to use the API for free for accessibility reasons. It is possible to use the client ID from one of those apps on either iOS or Android:

1. Install Dystopia from the App Store (if running iOS) or RedReader from the Play Store (if running Android).
2. Log in with your Reddit account in Dystopia/RedReader and allow it access to your account.
3. After logging in, you should receive an email from Reddit with the subject "You’ve authorized a new app in your Reddit account". Open the email and look for the text after "App ID". Copy that value.
4. In Apollo Reborn's settings, go to Custom API and enter the following values:
   • Reddit API Key: Paste the App ID you copied from the email
   • Redirect URI:
     • If using Dystopia: dystopia://response
     • If using RedReader: redreader://rr_oauth_redir
   • User Agent:
     • If using Dystopia: ios:com.CarbonDev.Dystopia:v1.0.1(by /u/DystopiaForReddit)
     • If using RedReader: RedReader/1.25.1
5. Log in to Reddit in Apollo normally. Reddit should ask to connect your Reddit account with Dystopia/RedReader instead of your own Reddit app. Accept the connection and you should be good to go!

Credits to this guide for the original workaround with RedReader.

More discussion in #82 and #367.

Avoiding API key revocations

[!NOTE] This section is for users who still have their own Reddit API key. If you're using the Dystopia/RedReader client IDs from the section above, do not change any of these values — that setup only works because it matches those apps' settings exactly.

Reddit doesn't publish how it decides which keys to revoke, but past revocation waves appear to target keys that identifiably belong to third-party clients. Keys whose settings don't mention Apollo have tended to survive. There are no guarantees, but you can remove the obvious signals. Reddit can see:

1. Your API app's registered settings at reddit.com/prefs/apps: name, description, about URL, and redirect URI.
2. The redirect_uri sent with every sign-in request.
3. The User-Agent header on all API traffic.

To scrub these:

1. Rename your Reddit API app. At reddit.com/prefs/apps, edit your app so the name, description, and about URL don't contain "Apollo", "Reborn", or the name of any other third-party client. Something generic and personal works best (e.g. my-ios-app).
2. Change the redirect URI. In the same edit form, replace apollo://reddit-oauth with a personal scheme (e.g. myscheme://reddit-oauth), then enter the exact same value in Apollo Reborn's settings under Custom API → Redirect URI. On v3.1.0 or later no IPA patching is needed — any scheme works (see Custom Redirect URI if you're on an older version). You won't be signed out: the redirect URI is only checked at sign-in time, so existing sessions keep refreshing normally.
3. Set a custom User Agent. In Custom API → User Agent, don't leave the field blank — the built-in default is the same browser string for every Apollo Reborn user, which is itself a fingerprint. Use Reddit's recommended format, personalized to you: ios:<your.bundle.id>:v1.0 (by /u/<your_username>).
4. (Sideloaders, optional) Pick a bundle ID without "Apollo". The bundle ID isn't sent to Reddit directly, so this is the least important signal, but it keeps "Apollo" out of any string that could end up in your user agent and costs nothing to change at signing time.

Finally, don't copy these examples verbatim. If everyone adopts the same "safe" name and redirect URI, that just becomes the next thing to scan for. The goal is to look like a small one-off personal script, which means values unique to you.

Features

General

• Use Apollo with your own Reddit and Imgur API keys (don't have one?)
• Fully working Imgur integration
• Native Reddit media upload support (images, albums, and videos)
• Liquid Glass icons and UI enhancements for iOS 26+
• Reddit /s/ share links support
• Pixel Pals support on newer iPhone models
• Image viewer and video playback fixes and enhancements
• Proxy Imgur images through DuckDuckGo for regional blocks
• Deep linking support for Steam, YouTube Shorts
• Auto-collapse pinned comments

Unlocked Ultra Features and Easter Eggs

• New Comments Highlightifier
• Saved Categories
• App Icons + Wallpapers (Community and Ultra packs, the SPCA icon, and "sekrit" app icons)
• Pixel Pals (including hidden "Artificial Superintelligence")
• Themes (including hidden "Chumbus" theme)

New Features

• Backup & Restore: Export and import Apollo and tweak settings as a .zip
• Custom Subreddit Sources: Use external URLs for random and trending subreddits
• Recently Read Posts: View all recently read posts from the Profile tab
• Editable Saved Categories: Add, rename, and delete saved post categories (Settings > Saved Categories)
• Bulk in-place translation: Translate posts and comments in-place with configurable provider and target language (Settings > Translation)
• Tap timestamp for creation date: Tap a comment or post's relative-time label to see the absolute creation date and time
• Tag Filters: Blur NSFW and/or Spoiler posts (including titles) in feeds, with per-subreddit overrides (Settings > Tag Filters)
• Inline Media Previews: Render images, GIFs, videos, and Imgur albums inline within posts and comments (Settings > Custom API > Media > Inline Media Previews)
• Rich Link Previews: Render metadata-rich link cards in post bodies and comments (Settings > Custom API > Media)
• User Profile Pictures: Show Reddit user avatars next to usernames in posts, comments, messages, inbox rows, and moderator lists (Settings > Apollo Reborn > Interface > Show User Profile Pictures)
• Self-hosted Notifications (advanced): Optionally route push registrations, watchers, and inbox checks through your own apollo-backend instance instead of having those requests silently dropped — delivered over native APNs (paid Apple Developer account) or the free Bark app, which works even on free-Apple-ID sideloads (Settings > Custom API > Notification Backend)

Not seeing thumbnails or inline previews?

[!TIP] If thumbnails or inline media previews aren't showing up, it's usually a Reddit account setting rather than a tweak issue. Open old.reddit.com/prefs and log in, then under the Media section:

• Set Thumbnails to "show thumbnails next to links"
• Set Media previews to "auto-expand media previews"

Save your preferences and relaunch Apollo.

Self-hosted notifications (advanced)

The legacy Apollo push backends went dark in June 2023 and are otherwise blocked by the tweak. If you run your own instance of apollo-backend, you can set the URL under Settings > Custom API > Notification Backend and the tweak will route all apollopushserver.xyz, apollonotifications.com, and beta.apollonotifications.com traffic to that host instead. Leave the field empty to keep the current "silently dropped" behavior.

Notifications can be delivered two ways — pick the one that matches your Apple account:

• Native push (APNs) — requires a paid Apple Developer account ($99/year). Real APNs delivery needs an aps-environment entitlement, which Apple only grants to paid teams, plus an explicit App ID with Push Notifications enabled (not the wildcard profile most sideloading tools create). This path supports everything, including Live Activities. Follow the backend's Getting Started guide.
• Bark — free, no Apple Developer account. Enable Bark Delivery under the same Notification Backend settings and notifications are relayed through the free Bark App Store app instead of APNs. This is the path for free-Apple-ID sideloads, which can never receive APNs pushes. Apollo's native notification and watcher UI works unmodified, taps deep-link back into Apollo, and Apollo's icons and notification sounds carry over. Follow the backend's Bark Getting Started guide. Trade-offs: Live Activities remain APNs-only, and notification content transits the Bark relay (self-host bark-server — bundled with the backend — to keep it off Bark's hosted api.day.app).

[!IMPORTANT] A free-account sideload has no push entitlement, so native APNs pushes can never arrive on it no matter how the backend is configured — Bark is the supported path there (the tweak detects the missing entitlement and explains this in the Notifications settings). Paid-certificate installs can use either delivery method and switch between them in place.

Known Issues

• Long-tapping share links open in the in-app browser

Opening links in Apollo

There are a few ways to open Reddit links in Apollo, depending on your browser and which IPA variant you installed.

Safari — Link Companion with bundled fallback choices

The separately installed Apollo Reborn Link Companion includes Open in Apollo (Companion), the recommended automatic Safari extension. It routes Reddit links through https://open.apolloreborn.app/open?url=…; the same signed companion app owns that Universal Link and forwards it to Apollo from native code, avoiding Safari's apollo:// confirmation.

Enable Settings > Apps > Safari > Extensions > Open in Apollo (Companion) and set Website Access → All Websites → Allow. All Websites lets it catch a Reddit result on Google, a link on another site, or a Reddit page opened from Messages. Link destinations are examined locally; page contents are not collected or transmitted.

Extension-bearing Apollo IPAs also include Open in Apollo (Manual Fallback). It does no automatic navigation or link rewriting and only has access to Reddit domains. If a Reddit page remains in Safari for 750 ms, it displays a real floating Open in Apollo link. This supplies a recovery path without racing the Companion extension. The fallback is included in the standard and Liquid Glass IPA variants.

Those IPAs also retain the former automatic implementation as Open in Apollo (Legacy). It is an opt-in alternative for people who prefer Apollo's bundled extension and do not want to install Link Companion. Legacy opens the validated Reddit destination through Apollo's apollo:// URL scheme, so iOS may ask for confirmation before switching apps. Enable either Legacy or Companion, never both: two automatic extensions can compete for the same navigation. The manual fallback is passive and is safe to leave enabled with either choice.

[!IMPORTANT] Install and launch the project-signed Link Companion before enabling its automatic extension. Apollo itself can keep any sideloaded bundle ID and signing team; it does not need an Associated Domains entitlement. Without the companion, the Universal Link used by Companion and Manual Fallback safely returns to Reddit instead of looping. Legacy does not use that Universal Link.

Supported link families include canonical post/comment/subreddit/profile/wiki URLs on reddit.com, www, old, new, np, m, and language subdomains; bare redd.it short links; /gallery/<post-id>; opaque post and comment /s/ share links; and current Reddit email/app-link wrappers. Google (including regional domains and AMP), Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo result wrappers are unwrapped before the tap. Direct media URLs (i.redd.it, v.redd.it, and preview hosts) intentionally stay in Safari because they do not contain a post ID that can be routed safely.

For links tapped in Messages: if iOS sends the link to Safari, the Companion can open it automatically; the manual Apollo extension supplies the button if that handoff does not happen. The Legacy extension only runs once a Reddit page has loaded in Safari. If another installed app claims reddit.com before Safari loads, no Safari extension can run; use Share → Open in Apollo (or the Shortcut fallback) from the link.

Safari — userscript (works with any variant)

If you installed a no-extensions variant, or you're on a jailbreak/.deb install, use the app-independent userscript instead:

1. Install the free Userscripts app (a Safari extension) and set its website access to All Websites in Settings > Safari > Extensions.
2. Open userscript/open-in-apollo.user.js in Safari, tap the aA menu → Userscripts, and install it.

It uses the same gesture-preserving opener flow and link-family coverage as the built-in extension.

Any other browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave) — share sheet

Apollo's bundled "Open in Apollo" share-sheet action is fixed in this build and works from any browser: on a Reddit page tap Share → Open in Apollo and it opens straight in Apollo. (This was previously believed impossible — the stock action called the deprecated -[UIApplication openURL:] that iOS 18+ force-fails — but it now opens the link via a non-deprecated path.) Available on the standard and Liquid Glass variants.

⚠️ Depends on how you install. The action runs inside an app extension, which on iOS 26 only launches if your installer sets the appex's main-binary code-signing flag. AltStore and SideStore do this (confirmed), as do Xcode and Apple's codesign (scripts/resign-ipa-codesign.sh re-signs an IPA this way for direct ideviceinstaller/Configurator install). Sideloadly and Feather currently do not — with them the extension is killed at launch and the action silently does nothing. If you installed with one of those, use the Shortcut below; it's signer-independent.

Fallback — "Open in Apollo" Shortcut (works on any install, with system confirmation)

A one-time Shortcut rewrites the reddit.com URL to Apollo's apollo:// scheme and runs Open URLs. It remains signer-independent, but because it uses a custom scheme iOS may show its system Open in Apollo? confirmation.

Build the "Open in Apollo" shortcut (about a minute)

In the Shortcuts app, create a shortcut named Open in Apollo with these actions, in order:

1. Get URLs from Shortcut Input — coerces the shared link/web page into a URL.
2. Replace Text — Find ^https?://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*reddit\.com, Replace apollo://reddit.com, Regular Expression: On, input = the URLs from step 1.
3. (optional, for redd.it links) Replace Text — Find ^https?://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*redd\.it, Replace apollo://redd.it, Regular Expression: On, input = the Updated Text from step 2.
4. Open URLs — input = the Updated Text from the last Replace Text.

Then in the shortcut's settings (ⓘ) turn on Show in Share Sheet and, under Share Sheet Types, leave only URLs enabled.

Only the scheme + host are rewritten, so the full path/query is preserved — comment permalinks, profiles, and /s/ share links all open correctly (the same apollo://reddit.com/<path> form the Safari extension and userscript produce). To share it with others, open the shortcut → Share → Copy iCloud Link.

Then, in any browser, on a Reddit page tap Share → Open in Apollo.

Custom Redirect URI

[!NOTE] Starting with Apollo Reborn v3.1.0, patching the Info.plist is no longer required to use a custom redirect URI. This section will remain for older versions, but if you're on v3.1.0 or later you can just enter your custom redirect URI in the tweak settings and it will work without any additional patching.

The redirect URI scheme (the part before ://) must be registered in the Apollo IPA's Info.plist under CFBundleURLTypes, otherwise the OAuth callback won't return to Apollo. Add your scheme with patch.sh or the Build IPA GitHub Action:

./patch.sh Apollo.ipa --url-schemes custom

Resulting Info.plist entry:

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
<array>
  <dict>
    <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
    <array>
      <string>twitterkit-xyz</string>
      <string>apollo</string>
      <string>custom</string> <!-- enables custom://reddit-oauth -->
    </array>
  </dict>
</array>

Patching IPA

patch.sh and the Build IPA GitHub Action apply optional patches to a stock Apollo IPA. By default they do not inject the tweak (the Action has an inject_tweak toggle for that) - locally use Sideloadly or build-ipa.sh to inject.

./patch.sh <path_to_ipa> [--liquid-glass | --liquid-glass-icons] [--fix-safari-extension] [--url-schemes <schemes>] [--remove-code-signature] [-o <output>]

Available patches:

• --liquid-glass - enables the iOS 26 Liquid Glass UI and installs a pack of Liquid Glass icons that can be switched between in the tweak's in-app icon picker.
• --liquid-glass-icons - installs the Liquid Glass icon catalog only, without the iOS 26 UI chrome (skips the vtool build-version bump that opts the app into the iOS 26 runtime, so legacy UIKit behaviors like the bottom-tab swipe gesture are preserved). Mutually exclusive with --liquid-glass.
• --fix-safari-extension - converts Apollofari.appex into the passive, Reddit-only Open in Apollo (Manual Fallback) and adds the former automatic implementation as the opt-in Open in Apollo (Legacy). See safari-extension/README.md. Official release IPAs already include both; use it when patching an IPA yourself.
• --url-schemes <list> - adds comma-separated URL schemes to CFBundleURLTypes (see Custom Redirect URI, obsolete on v3.1.0+).
• --remove-code-signature - strips the existing code signature.

To run via GitHub Actions, fork this repo and trigger Actions > Build IPA. It can inject the tweak (inject_tweak), strip extensions (no_extensions), apply Liquid Glass (liquid_glass) or Liquid Glass icons only (liquid_glass_icons), add URL schemes, and remove the code signature in one run, from an Apollo IPA URL. The manual and legacy Safari extensions are packaged automatically whenever extensions are kept.

Sideloadly

Recommended configuration:

• Use automatic bundle ID: unchecked — pick a bundle ID that doesn't contain "Apollo" (e.g. com.foo.bar, see Avoiding API key revocations)
• Signing Mode: Apple ID Sideload
• Inject dylibs/frameworks: checked - add the .deb via +dylib/deb/bundle
  • Cydia Substrate: checked
  • Substitute / Sideload Spoofer: unchecked

Build Injected IPA Locally

build-ipa.sh builds the tweak .deb and injects it into an Apollo IPA. For this repo's already-injected Apollo-base.ipa, it uses the repo-local scripts/inject-deb-local.sh replacement injector first, so azule/cyan are not required for normal test builds. For a truly stock IPA without the injection scaffold, install azule or cyan; signing/sideloading is still handled by your preferred signer.

make package
./build-ipa.sh --ipa ./Apollo.ipa [--deb ./packages/<tweak>.deb] [-o ./packages/Apollo-Tweaked.ipa]

Distribution

For the in-house four-variant IPA release flow, AltStore Classic/SideStore/Feather source generation, and the meaning of the “No Extensions” builds, see DISTRIBUTION.md. Apollo-Reborn is intended for AltStore Classic, not AltStore PAL.

Build

Requirements:

• Theos

Instructions:

1. git clone https://github.com/Apollo-Reborn/Apollo-Reborn
2. cd Apollo-Reborn
3. git submodule update --init --recursive
4. make package or make package THEOS_PACKAGE_SCHEME=rootless for rootless variant

Contributors ✨

Thank you to these wonderful people:

Code Contributors

Icon & Design Contributors